First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Regains $20K, Bucking the Swoon in Stocks

• Price Point: Bitcoin has managed to regain the $20,000 level, remaining steady during the recent crash of fiat currencies against the U.S. dollar. Some analysts are predicting the cryptocurrency will decouple from stocks.
• Market Moves: Short-bitcoin investment products assets under management rose to $172 million last week, the highest on record, prompting some profit-taking with the first outflow in seven weeks totaling $5.1 million.
• Chart of the Day: The U.S. longer-duration Treasury notes now offer 4% yield, which makes risky assets look less attractive to investors.

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Price Point

Bitcoin (BTC) regained ground Tuesday as equities remained weak, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closing down Monday. Some analysts are saying bitcoin has perhaps decoupled from broader financial markets that are on the downside, even if only briefly.

The U.K.'s pound recovered somewhat, as investors digested statements from the Bank of England. Bitcoin, after hitting lows of $18,500 over the weekend, is now trading above $20,000.

Over the last 24 hours, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market value is up 6%, according to CoinDesk data.

“Bitcoin’s recent bounce came a bit out of the blue and is reinforcing the decorrelation to equities we have seen very recently,” said Florian Giovannacci, head of trading at Covario AG.

“It was helped a bit by a weaker dollar, but for me, it shows the strong demand for BTC under $20k,” Giovannacci added. “This drop of correlation needs to be confirmed before speaking about decoupling.”

Unus sed leo (LEO), which is issued by iFinex, the parent company of crypto exchange Bitfinex, was up 7% on the day and is up 16% year to date. Matteo Bottacini, an analyst at Crypto Finance AG, said the year-to-date performance is “a result of great tokenomics.”

Uniswap (UNI) rallied by 17% on the day alongside gains for other altcoins.

In the news, crypto exchange FTX won the bidding war to buy the assets of bankrupt crypto broker Voyager Digital, Voyager said in a press release late Monday. FTX was bidding against Wave Financial, a digital-asset investment firm.

And, financial-services firm Galaxy Digital has teamed up with Chainlink Labs to bring crypto pricing data to blockchains.

CoinDesk Market Index

Biggest Gainers

Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Keep3rV1 KP3R +11.6% Currency Uniswap UNI +10.47% DeFi STEPN GMT +7.21% Culture & Entertainment

Biggest Losers

Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Terra Luna Classic LUNA -10.71% Smart Contract Platform Terra LUNA2 -5.23% Smart Contract Platform Ribbon Finance RBN -0.57% DeFi

Sector classifications are provided via the Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive and standardized classification system for digital assets. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) is a broad-based index designed to measure the market capitalization weighted performance of the digital asset market subject to minimum trading and exchange eligibility requirements.

Market Moves

Crypto Fund Inflows Totaled $8.3M Last Week: CoinShares

By Lyllah Ledesma

Digital-asset investment products witnessed inflows of $8.3 million last week, signaling investors’ appetite for digital assets continues to be tepid, according to data from CoinShares.

Short-bitcoin investment products assets under management rose to $172 million, the highest on record, prompting some profit-taking with the first outflow in seven weeks totaling $5.1 million.

Investors dipped into ethereum, which saw $7 million in inflows last week, the first week of net inflows for the token after the Ethereum blockchain’s software update called the Merge and following four weeks of outflows.

The recent launch of a short-ethereum investment product saw minor inflows of $1.1 million.

Chart of the Day

U.S. Long Bonds Offer 4% Yield

By Omkar Godbole

• The U.S. longer-duration Treasury notes now offer 4% yield. That has massive implications for both traditional and crypto markets.
• The 4% yield on the 10-year note makes equities less attractive. Meanwhile, investors who poured money into the dollar-pegged stablecoins early this year, may now liquidate their holdings and switch to the relatively risk-free Treasurys.
• Stablecoins are risky compared with the Treasurys and may soon fall under the regulatory hammer.
• Recently, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler reiterated that stablecoins need more regulation.
• Meanwhile, a New York court asked Tether, the company behind the world's largest stablecoin USDT$1.0007 to prove 1-to-1 backing of its dollar-pegged cryptocurrency.

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